Soulmates ✓

24 | Letting Go

"You know what I always want to see?" He whispered against her collarbones, leaving soft butterfly kisses.

"What?" Shay breathed, pulling him back upward so that she could look into his black irises.

He held her face in his palms and kissed her forehead before saying, "I want to see you happy, living your dreams, and always drunk in love."

Shay smiled at his selfless wish and held his head against her heart. She was deeply, insanely, and irrevocably in love with the boy.

The moment reels again and again like a broken record, and Shay can not stop them as she looks at her reflection in the mirror. Black hair hangs in waves around her face and down her chest. Her cheeks glow with a pink flush, her lips red, swollen, and slightly parted. And her eyes, her eyes harbor yearning and uncontained passion.

God, she looks high on love.

Reality sinks in, and she has to accept it.

She is in love with Ryan Tripathi.

"Can you fall in love again without falling out of it?" She asks herself. This is what Aarav always wanted. He wanted her to be happy.

The woman in the mirror need not confirm her words. The confrontation was due for a long time, and it only gets easier when she realizes how being with Ryan makes her happy. She has to do this for both herself and Aarav. Shay can at least do this for him. Happiness is a choice, and she has to choose it this time.

Shay lies on her bed with a framed photo of Aarav and herself. They were lying on the field, with her head on his chest, him kissing the top of her head. That was their first, perfect date together. She can't go back in time but she desperately wants to.

Aarav had been a part of her life since she was a little toddler. They grew up together and shared all their firsts. She can confirm that they are soulmates even though they are no longer together. His love marked every corner of her heart, branded itself underneath her skin like love letters itched in permanent ink. Shay needs no rings or bracelets to remind her how undying their love is. Shay feels his absence in her life, in all of her thoughts every single day.

Because death can't destroy love: Love is omnipresent, ever-existent, and never destructible. It is never incinerated and keeps haunting us like a forever ghost.

But years of longing have only taught her one thing: She has to let go and move on to be happy again. Shay owes this to herself.

Aarav and Ryan might be identical, but they were always so different. While Aarav was her happy moment, Ryan has always been the one who helped her through her darkest days. Ryan is the one who has the power to pull her out of the grieving corner.

For hours, she stares at the white ceiling, cementing her heart to let go of the past and embrace the future, to choose Ryan. When the memories and flashbacks consume her mind and tighten her throat, she throws the comforter and pulls up her laptop, still holding Aarav's photo against her chest. She stares at it for a good long time, her finger hovering over the media file on the screen.

Her heart jumps to her throat as soon as Aarav's sun-kissed smiling face flits across the screen. It was one of those rare days when he wasn't the one behind the camera and letting her use him as a prop to get some great shots for her social media profiles. Ryan was the one giving them instruction while they made funny faces and created awful poses. A smile spread across her lips when the perfect moment popped up. A moment where they forgot the world, where they didn't care whether Ryan was still capturing them, where Aarav pulled Shay against his chest and kissed her forehead.